How Does Legal Status Determine Immigrant Agency During Encounters of Workplace Incivility?

Workplace incivility is ubiquitously experienced by immigrants. While a growing body of literature has sought to identify the causes and the outcomes of this phenomenon, what remains largely unexplored is the role of legal status in configuring how workplace incivility manifests in the immigrant experience. To fill the gap in the existing literature, in this article we answer the question: How does legal status inform the ways in which immigrants exercise agency in response to workplace incivility? In addressing this question, we juxtapose autoethnographic vignettes focusing on experiences with workplace incivility that we have individually encountered in academe. The juxtaposition of these vignettes illuminate how legal status is a pivotal factor in determining the forms and the depth of agency available to immigrants to respond to incidents of workplace incivility. In light of our findings, we consider the implications posed by the nexus between an immigrant’s agency and workplace incivility to debates on business ethics.